


Sugar Flurries, Candy Storms

by mightbewriting



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Coworkers - Freeform, F/M, Gingerbread Edict, Harry Potter Epilogue Compliant, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Mandatory Fun-Having, Minister for Magic Hermione Granger, Romance, Silver Fox Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:55:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27663685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbewriting/pseuds/mightbewriting
Summary: Draco steps closer. He offers her a single, appraising glance up and down. “You’re Hermione Granger. I suspect you can do anything if you really want it done.”“Stop almost-complimenting me, Malfoy.”His smile grows, white teeth nearly as bright as his hair as he reaches out and flips a curl over her shoulder. He shifts, leaning once more against the nearby column.“Trust me, Granger, you’llknowif I’m complimenting you.”
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 59
Kudos: 620
Collections: D/Hr Advent 2020, Dramione Favorites





	Sugar Flurries, Candy Storms

**Author's Note:**

> hello! welcome to my entry for the d/hr advent 2020 collection. i'm so honored to participate; thank you to everyone who nominated me and to musyc for organizing such an amazing event! i hope you enjoy this little story! my prompt was: gingerbread.
> 
> this story is also available in audiobook format through etl.echo.audiobooks and can be listened to on [youtube](https://youtu.be/2YkJzpOQivE) and [spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0xURFogi9EuQaEx5AfHZdr?si=WXK1RbJVQwujAal5qXhifw)!

The gingerbread house slumps, crooked. Royal icing seeps and slides, not-quite-set as a chocolate disc slips down the house front. A candy cane tips, falling onto a green jelly tot bush. The icing mortar heaves its last breath, and one half of the gingerbread roof slides—in agonizing slow-motion—to the cake board below, tiny candy shingles scattering.

This crumbling gingerbread house has won.

Harry Potter sighs.

The air tastes distinctly of icing sugar. A sweet plume puffs from floating candy floss clouds as they choke the entire cafeteria: a charm gone wrong, or perhaps, exactly right.

“Is there anything the great Harry Potter _can’t_ do?” the reporter asks, prompting another sigh as Harry runs a hand through his hair, streaking it with fine white sugar. 

“I—” he breaks off. A thud from the storeroom behind the reporter draws their attention. Harry winces. “I think my winning is only incidental, what with the other entries being—incomplete.”

It takes several beats for the reporter to turn her attention back to Harry, gaze lingering on the storeroom door and the successive thumps emanating from within. Eyes narrowed, she returns her focus to the interview.

“Would you call the Ministry’s first annual gingerbread house decorating competition a success?” she asks with a level, disinterested voice.

Harry clears his throat and resolutely does not look at the storeroom door again.

“It was certainly enthusiastic,” he says.

The reporter flicks her wand at the quote quill hovering over her shoulder, notebook snapping shut. She casts a bored, belabored look around the cafeteria. Past the end of the workday on a Friday night, her exasperation over this assignment is palpable. Most employees have already left, and those remaining have long since abandoned their department’s half-complete contest entries in favor of mulled wines and inter-floor gossip: much of which centers around the noises drifting through the storeroom door. 

Harry told his wife to expect him home for dinner over thirty minutes ago.

“Do you know where I can find the Minister to get a quote before I go?” The reporter plucks the fallen candy cane from Harry’s jelly tot bushes. With a small pause, she waves it vaguely, something likely meant to say _you don’t mind, do you?_ She pops it in her mouth without a spare beat for his response.

“I believe the Minister is”—a cough, redness crawling up the back of Harry’s neck—“indisposed, at the moment.”

“Surprising, isn’t it? That she didn’t finish her own entry even though this is her event?”

Harry, having witnessed much of the week—and year—that preceded this, can only shake his head.

“Not really.”

—

“What is this, Granger?” 

Draco ignores Hermione’s assistant. Ignores the complaints that Hermione has no room in her schedule for impromptu visitors right now. Ignores the wards on her office door and the startled, exasperated expression she gives him as he slaps a parchment onto her desk.

“You can’t just burst in the Minister for Magic’s—”

Draco spells the door shut behind him, silencing the barely-out-of-Hogwarts assistant. 

They keep getting younger every year. Which is absolutely the case, and not the reverse, wherein he is only getting older. Forty-five is still less than half a long magical life lived. 

“Olivia isn’t incorrect,” Hermione says with an eye roll before she returns her focus to the document in her hands. Distinctly, it is _not_ the document for which Draco requires an explanation. “You can’t just barge into my office demanding my time and attention. I am the Minister for Magic, after all.”

“And we’re all very impressed, Granger. But you see, the Minister for Magic trusts me these days. Likes me a bit, even. She put in a good word to get me this job, if you’ll recall. So sometimes, when she does something especially infuriating, I like to barge into her office.”

Hermione sighs, sets down her parchments, and leans against the back of her chair. She crosses her arms in front of her chest, despite the fact that it pulls her robes a little too tight across her shoulders. 

“When she made that recommendation with the Department of Mysteries, she’d just been through some relatively traumatic time travel nonsense and was feeling generous.”

“Regretting your decision?”

“Every day of the five years since. And especially every Thursday at three in the afternoon.”

“Our weekly briefings aren’t so bad. I am actually capable of performing my job with competence. At least, my last performance review with the Minister for Magic stated as much.”

Whatever angry mood had propelled Draco into her office shifts as he repurposes his scowl into a slight smirk. 

“Merlin, Malfoy. Care to get to the point of why you’re here? I have a speech I’m prepping for in”—she glances at her watch—“sixteen minutes.”

Draco steps forward, brows lifted. He places a single finger on the parchment he previously dropped onto her desk.

“What is this?” he asks.

His eyes remain on her as she bristles, as the conical spines that comprise her defenses stiffen and point directly at him. 

“It’s _fun,”_ she says.

“Fun?”

“Yes, fun.”

“Mandated fun?”

“Yes. Malfoy. Mandated fun and every department head must participate, _you_ included. I want to see an entry from Mysteries.”

“Is this because of that article?”

She averts her gaze, suddenly fixated on an ornate quill and ink pot on her desk.

“Of course not.”

“That was a bullshite article and you know it, Granger. You’re capable of being fun.” Draco sinks into one of the leather chairs opposite her desk, ignoring her tiny protesting noises. He begins to lift his feet, poised to prop them up before he aborts, returning the soles of shoes to the floor. Hermione’s mouth has already dropped open, an admonishment on the cusp of being spoken into reality, but she, too, aborts. 

He smiles instead, a grasp at the threads of what he’d been saying. “That article was unfair,” he says, reiterating his point. “Even Scorpius thinks you’re fun.” 

If anything, Hermione bristles more.

“Well, as it stands, he’s met significantly less fun versions of me while unravelling timelines, has he not? Also, don’t—don’t sideways compliment me. That article was a not-entirely-inaccurate assessment of the Ministry under my leadership for the past several years.”

Draco scoffs. “You’re focused. Not unfun. I have a great deal of fun arguing with you.”

“Stop sort-of complimenting me. _The Prophet_ called my administration ‘all work and no play.’ My employees were equated to house elves. _House elves._ After everything I’ve done for—”

Draco spears her with an unamused look, a single brow lifted as he crosses his ankle over his knee. He settles, leans back, posture evident of a man prepared to dig in. 

Hermione clears her throat.

“It has—” she starts, breaking off as she swallows. She straightens a piece of parchment on her desk. “It has come to my attention that perhaps I’ve been rather obsessively focused on work since Ronald and I separated.”

“That was three years ago.”

“It’s been a long three years.” Her mouth twists briefly to a frown as she exhales, levels with him, focus torn from the trinkets on her desk. He sits there, posture confident, an expression on his face caught between somewhat perturbed and somewhat amused: Draco Malfoy’s perpetual middle ground.

“I suppose it has been rather tense around here,” he says.

Vulnerability evaporates in a flash. “Do you even value your job, Malfoy? I am your boss.”

He shrugs.

“Just because you deliver my performance reviews doesn’t mean you’re my boss. From a leadership hierarchy perspective, at least. You’re sort-of-my-boss, at best.”

“Delivering your performance reviews is exactly the thing that makes me your boss. As you so often seem to forget, I am the Minister for Magic—”

“—You do like bringing that up.”

Her voice drops and a small, annoyed growl pushes through her pursed lips. “As your actual, not-debatable-boss I’m telling you that participation in the first annual Ministry Gingerbread House Decorating Contest is mandatory.”

“Sometimes I think about smothering you with your own hair, Granger. I hope you know that.” Dramatically, he removes his silver-framed glasses and lifts his hands, framing her face and hair between them. He gestures lazily as if to suggest a pantomime of exactly the ways in which he’d like to use her own hair as a murder weapon.

“You cannot _say that_ to the Minister for Magic.”

“I just did.”

“Well, I sometimes think about cracking your thick skull. But as you are my employee and I am a professional, I refrain.”

Draco chuckles as he drops his arms, resting them casually on the sides of his chair, fingers tapping against the wood as he waits for her to go on.

Hermione frowns, watching him with suspicion, as if hoping for him to take offense. “Furthermore, with the amount of hair potions you use, I doubt you’d even feel it. Which is tremendously disappointing.”

“Was that meant to be an insult? There’s nothing wrong with my hair.”

“There’s nothing wrong with mine.”

“Yours is a wild, unmanageable bush.”

“And yours looks soft as a bale of hay with all the products and potions you force into it.” 

Draco stiffens, scowls, leans forward, and props his elbows on Hermione’s desk.

“I will have you know that just because my hair stays where I want it to stay does not mean that it’s untouchable. It is quite soft.”

Hermione laughs and tosses a parchment at him: the announcement for her contest.

“I can’t imagine,” she says.

“Please don’t. It wouldn’t be professional to fantasize about running your hands through my hair.”

“Nor is it professional to consider committing crimes with mine.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

The air in Hermione’s office thickens, something touchable, tactile. One could swim through it, part it with a heavy stroke. 

After a beat—a long, heavy beat wherein the current in the air runs and swirls in rivulets between them, brushing up against them both—Draco dives first. “As always, this has been frustrating, but also vibrantly entertaining.”

She exhales, shaking her head. “Enough with the halfway-compliments, Malfoy. I need to finish preparing my speech; I don’t have time to decipher sarcasm.”

Draco smiles, stands, and snatches her ridiculous edict for mandated holiday fun. He charms her inkpot a vivid green, and leaves the Minister for Magic’s office without another word.

—

Harry nearly manages to escape from work for the day when Hermione’s voice calls after him. He pauses, exhales, and turns away from the bank of Floo grates in the Atrium. Hermione approaches him at a brisk walk, just shy of a skip that could easily cascade into a jog, leaving her Auror detail moving much too conspicuously in order to maintain pace.

Harry has told her before that they can’t protect her if they can’t keep up with her. The warnings, apparently, have yet to stick. Only Tuesday, and Harry has already processed two high profile arrests that will likely result in Azkaban sentences, conducted a very lengthy corrective conversation wherein he had to place one of his Aurors on suspension, and failed to make it home to dinner at a reasonable hour. A pre-jog Hermione chasing after him in the Atrium did not bode well for his already packed week.

She stops beside him, looping her arm in his as she pulls him from the Floo queue. 

“Is this about the gingerbread edict?” he asks in a tone that lands somewhere in the vicinity of good-humor. He checks his watch: confirmation that he’s already missed the projected time he told Ginny he would be home for dinner. 

“Gingerbread edict? Merlin, is that what people are calling it?” Hermione asks. Her countenance sinks as she blows out a breath that sends several strands of hair flying away from her face. 

“I might have heard it referred to as such by—several colleagues.” 

“Gods. What is wrong with people? I’m _trying_ to inject some holiday spirit into the workplace. Which, by the way, I haven’t heard back from the DMLE confirming your participation.”

Harry doesn’t answer immediately, just a beat of hesitation. It’s enough, though, that Hermione knows. She _knows._

Harry receives a whack on his bicep and a scowl.

“I was hoping I could get a lifelong friend exemption?” A lilt, just there, at the end of his sentence, enough to make it a question. 

“Absolutely not, Harry. You are the head of the department! The whole premise is that it will be fun for the average employee to see their supervisors go head to head, root for their individual departments. I expect to see you participating.”

“Wrangled you, too, has she?” Draco’s voice drifts from behind Hermione, a split second warning of his imminent arrival. He stops and leans against a stone column beside them, looking far more smug and far less perturbed than he had earlier in the afternoon.

Harry doesn’t answer, but the awkward adjustment of his glasses and the hand raked through his hair is answer enough. 

A smirk pulls at Draco’s mouth. “Well, I’ve decided that my only consolation in all this is getting to see Granger’s pathetic attempts at decorating something. A creative endeavor? Can’t wait to see it.”

Hermione swallows. The muscles in her cheek twitch at the same moment he circumvents the use of her title.

“I’m not participating,” she says. “I’m the judge. So I’ll be assessing _your_ creative endeavors, Malfoy.”

Draco straightens, a wicked smile stretching across his face. “That’s Department of Mysteries Head Unspeakable Malfoy, to you. We want to be professional, don’t we?”

“I _will_ hex you, Malfoy.”

He laughs, and the sound fills up the atrium, hearty and aspirational. Several eyes track to the source of his amusement, a moment of joy they do not have the luxury of sharing. 

“You hear that Potter? The Minister for Magic has threatened me bodily harm.”

Harry shakes his head, eyes catching on the Floo; he checks his watch again.

“If we could circle back around, however,” Malfoy starts. He pushes off the wall and settles into a wide, confident stance, still smiling as he lets his head tilt and arms cross. “Is the Minister for Magic suggesting that her own department won’t be participating in her mandatory fun-having?”

“I’ve just said, I’m the judge.”

“Seems unfair, that. If I’m to be forced into mandatory fun-having, I at least deserve the chance to win.”

“If I participate, that’s just more competition for you. Seems counterintuitive.”

Draco _tuts._

“That very much depends on your working definition of the word ‘competition,’ which, to be clear, you do not qualify as such. What I do want, is a fair judge who wouldn’t _dream_ of operating with bias, or threatening to hex her employees.”

Hermione blinks, draws a breath, and looks away from the imposing confidence with which Draco carries himself, so cool and collected with his distinguished hair gleaming in its maybe-white-blond, maybe-gone-grey ambiguousness. Between his silver hair and silver glasses, Draco somehow manages to look ornate and expensive while doing very little at all.

“Well, I—fine. Maybe I could try calling the _Prophet_ in. This is their fault anyway.”

“Because of that shoddy exposé?” Harry asks, attention drawn back into the conversation. 

He is summarily ignored, not all that unusual in their presence. Their dance is tried, well-known, and, perhaps one day, nearing a conclusion.

“Yes, let’s have a reporter judge. Or the people. Anyone not you, really, Granger.”

Green flames flare, flashing. Hermione tilts her head. “Looks like Harry has left us.”

“For the best, usually.”

She releases a heavy breath, searching the Atrium for—perhaps an answer? An escape of her own?

“It’s already Tuesday,” she says. “Do you really expect me to be able to get someone from the _Prophet_ here to cover and judge an event happening on Friday?”

Draco steps closer. He offers her a single, appraising glance up and down. “You’re Hermione Granger. I suspect you can do anything if you really want it done.”

“Stop almost-complimenting me, Malfoy.”

His smile grows, white teeth nearly as bright as his hair as he reaches out and flips a curl over her shoulder. He shifts, leaning once more against the nearby column.

“Trust me, Granger, you’ll _know_ if I’m complimenting you.”

She laughs, the sound exploding out of her at an almost embarrassing volume.

“Why? Because flobberworms will fly?”

Draco snorts and arches a brow. 

“Hardly,” he says. “Your knickers might, though.”

The noise Hermione makes sounds more bird-squawking than human. She grabs Draco at the wrist and yanks him around to the other side of the column. She shoots her Auror detail a look that tells them they are under no circumstances to follow. 

“Malfoy, gods—” she breaks off, drops his wrist. He’s only smiling wider. “You _cannot_ talk to the Minister for Magic in that way.”

“I just did.”

“You are so disrespectful.”

“You don’t care much about respect when Potter talks to you. Why just me?”

She ignores that, clenching and unclenching her hands at shoulder level: a kind of frantic supplication, as if seeking Merlin for a solution to her Draco Malfoy shaped problem. 

“We _agreed,”_ she finally says, voice dropping low. “You can’t just bring up my knickers. That’s highly inappropriate.”

Draco’s brows lift as his grin carves a dimple into the side of his face, shaded by silver stubble. 

“So was kissing me—” he begins, but Hermione steps on his toes, knees knocking into his legs as she launches forward to cover his mouth with her hand.

“We agreed we were _not going to talk about it.”_

He doesn’t move and neither does she, standing far too close together, her hand on his mouth. Slowly, she finally steps away.

“That was a year ago, Granger.”

“We both had a lot of champagne at that party. It was one—no, Malfoy. We’re not doing this. There were no knickers involved any way; you’re just trying to wind me up.”

“You weren’t wearing knickers?”

An Auror appears around the column as the sound of Hermione’s frustrated groan picks up in pitch. She waves him off and shoots Draco a murderous look. 

For his part, Draco appears entirely unfazed by her ire. Instead, he seems almost amused.

“You know,” he says. “I think I’ve decided this gingerbread house decorating competition will be fun after all. I can’t think of a better way to spend my Friday afternoon than besting you at your own fun-having event.”

She scoffs, transforms it into a laugh and almost, nearly, stomps her foot in frustration. The muscles around her knee jump, calves tense, heel partially lifting from the tile. She allows it to tap rapidly instead.

“You think you’re going to win?” she asks, and it’s a petty thing to be drawn into. She’s forty-six years old, an established Minister for Magic coming up on a reelection, a divorcee with two adult children and a penchant for overworking her employees, apparently. She ought not assign any value to wiping the floor with Draco’s overconfident expression. And yet, she’s drawn completely in. Has been for years now. 

“I don’t think you have even a shadow of a culinary skill set,” he says.

“This—it’s decorating. Not baking. The supplies will be provided—”

“Got to run, Granger.” He winks at her, pushing off the column again. “See you Thursday at three.”

—

“I’m cancelling,” Hermione says as Draco enters her office with neither knock nor announcement on Thursday at exactly three o’clock. She hears Olivia protesting in the corridor, half-hearted attempts to keep him out that have never, ever been effective. 

“I have reports to brief you on, so un-cancel. You’re just still cross about the fun-having you now have to participate in, and understandably so. I plan to sweep the competition tomorrow.”

“You’re just here to be difficult. Your weekly briefings are vague and obfuscating on the best weeks. We’ll push to next Thursday. Now get out of my office, Malfoy.”

“No.”

With a casual ease, he takes his seat across from her. He reaches over the desk and flips the file folder in front of her shut. 

“I am your boss and you will do what I say.” She pauses, inhales. Clenches her jaw. _“Please_ get out of my office.”

Frustration eats at the patience in Hermione’s tone, already worn thin by a long week in preparation of proving she and her administration are capable of having fun. She’s ordered a confectionary’s worth of sweets. She’s negotiated an interview with the _Prophet_ and exclusive rights to cover the competition. She’s parried back and forth with each department head over their anticipated participation and lackluster sense of enthusiasm.

Beyond all that, she has received and responded to three owls from Rose in as many days. She has received zero from Hugo. She’s worked well past dinner every night this week _and_ just had one of the Aurors in her protective detail request a reassignment due to unreasonable work hours.

Suffice it to say, Hermione does not have time for Draco Malfoy and the endless pleasure he takes in irritating her. 

“You are so annoying, Granger. You know that?”

“I’m annoying? For telling you what to do? You do remember you once said you—how did you put it— _mildly enjoyed_ being bossed around by me?”

“Merlin, Granger. Will you _ever_ let that go? I literally could not regret a single sentence any more than that one. You are a nightmare.”

“You can’t just _say_ things like that to the Minister for Magic.”

“We’ve already had that conversation at least twice this week. Un-cancel our three o’clock. There was a bit of a fire in the wand wood research room.”

Hermione’s shoulders sink as she slumps back against her chair, sighing. “Of course there was.” 

Draco’s gaze follows her movements as she rubs her temples, closes her eyes, opens them again and straightens her posture. She rolls her shoulders, takes a deep breath. Determination settles behind her eyes, alert in the face of another day’s worth of disasters.

“Exhaustion has never been a good look on you, Granger.” Draco stands, leans over her desk, and for a moment, watches as her eyes narrow and her breathing stills. “You know what? Un-un-cancel this meeting. All you really needed to know was that the fire happened. It’s been handled.”

He’s out the door before she can properly shout for him to turn around. To explain himself. To unjinx her inbox which now appears to be sorting itself based on the importance of the correspondence, with those deemed _unimportant_ ripping themselves to shreds, drifting like tiny parchment snowflakes to the floor. 

—

Hermione responds to thirteen owls in the hour she usually spent in her briefing with Draco. She firecalls the Muggle Prime Minister in the hour after that to continue their endless debate over land rights and taxing percentages as they relate to magical spaces that actually take up more space than can be observed by a muggle eye. She does not, immediately following that call, march down to Draco’s office to demand answers about the wand wood fire he so casually mentioned.

She waits until the very end of the workday, calming down from her lively debate with the Prime Minister, before she finally seeks him out. 

To effectively mitigate potential damages, she has several questions on her incident assessment forms that need answering: Which wand woods burned? How extensive was the blaze? The duration? What budget would she need to preemptively allocate to repairs and restoration? Among so, so many others. 

She grips her hair at the roots, tangled in curls as she exhales, then looks at the clock. She rises with a heavy sigh and makes her way to level nine.

A familiar sort of scent, of campfires and biting cold nights with only a tent for shelter, greets her the moment she steps off the lift and into the Department of Mysteries. It requires that she pause, orient herself, and start again. Sensory memories from years gone by, almost thirty of them now, have no place in her day to day, not with departmental catastrophes to assess and mandatory fun-having to enforce. 

She stops, blinks, and scans Draco’s office with furrowed brows and a mouth gone slack; it has been filled to bursting with confectionaries.

“What’s all this?” she asks as she enters.

He looks up from his desk, emerald green robes spotted with sparkling sugar in uncharacteristic imperfection.

“No knock? How rude of you, Granger.”

She almost doesn’t hear it, ridiculous as it is. Her gaze sticks on the candy floss floating like fluffy, pink and purple clouds above his desk. She cranes, peering beneath them to get a better look at him.

“Malfoy. Why, exactly, do you have a pop-up sweets shop in your office?” she asks as an eye roll and a reluctant smile steal the scrutiny from her face.

He leans back in his chair, arms crossed, smirk firmly affixed.

“I’m ensuring I win your ridiculous contest tomorrow.”

“By supplementing with your own decor? Malfoy that’s not—”

“Don’t you even think about telling me it’s not _allowed._ I checked and rechecked the memo you sent out regarding the event. While it specifies that all necessary supplies will be provided by the Ministry, it says nothing about prohibiting the use of one’s personal supplies.” 

The candy floss clouds lift, allowing Hermione to straighten and still see him properly. They twist and float near the ceiling, gently rolling from one side of the room to the other. A pretty charm, especially impressive when the colors start shifting: pink to purple to blue to white to pink again. 

“So you’ve been stockpiling candies instead of working?”

“Well you see, my three o’clock meeting got cancelled, so I had some time.”

She breathes in. He smirks. Hearts race. She breathes out.

“Draco Malfoy, I _will_ curse you.”

He leans forward, elbows on his desk, chin propped on folded hands. “You can’t just _say_ that to your employees, dear Minister.”

She does not curse him. 

She charms his green robes red instead, suitably festive and a much less annoying shade than his Slytherin preferences for green guised as holiday cheer. He sputters his offense but does not immediately charm them back. Instead, he sets his candy clouds on her, trailing as her own personal storm all the way back through the Department of Mysteries and into the Atrium.

Hermione leaves work on time that evening, but she leaves Diagon Alley late, extendable bag carrying quite the load of her own supplementary confectionery delights.

—

The Ministry cafeteria buzzes with a din of laughter and conversation. The volume waxes and wanes, surging and pitching under the weight of wine and holiday spirits as Ministry employees chat and mingle, occasionally providing support and encouragement for their department heads as they toil over gingerbread houses. Most department heads have already abandoned their projects in favor of socializing instead.

Sparkling silver snowflakes hover around the room, bouncing warm light from their many shining edges. They weave in and out of strung up garland, avoiding the floating mistletoe adorned with festive ribbons and slips of parchment that chant “I’m a decoration, not a directive!” whenever they float too close to someone’s head.

Magical hair styling solutions hold Draco’s hair in place as he bends, as he cranes, as he twists and contorts and otherwise exerts far more labor than a gingerbread house decorating contest ought to require. And yet—tiny beads of sweat form at his brow ridge. 

He tries to ignore the commentary: good, bad, and snide alike.

“Wow, Malfoy. Really going all out, aren’t you?” From Hermione’s receptionist. Not having to participate has clearly made her smug, and allowed her to take liberties. The free mulled wine at the end of the workday on the Friday before Christmas likely also has something to do with it.

Draco sets down his mostly empty piping bag with exaggerated care. He cracks a knuckle, schools his expression, and straightens to address her. “It’s a competition. I am exerting effort because I have pride.”

Red wine stained teeth flash at him as she smiles. “No one’s losing any honor if they don’t win this contest. It’s just a silly fun thing.”

“Says you.”

“You’re ridiculous. If she wasn’t just as ridiculous, I’d say this is pointless. But the two of you…” she trails off and angles her head to the other side of the cafeteria where Hermione is set up at her own table, glueing gingerbread panels together with royal icing. Sweet mortar and sugar bricks to make a delightfully delicious little house of her own.

Draco does not react to the pointed look and lifted brow lobbed in his direction. The slight smile, either. 

He assesses his work: well over halfway to completion with plenty of time to spare. He straightens the tiny gingerbread chimney that has started to tip ever-so-slightly. 

His attention is pulled across the room to where Hermione is working on her own entry. It could be called curiosity, the way his head tilts, the way he glances at his own gingerbread house and back over at hers. He taps the toe of his shoe against the linoleum floors, shifts his weight from foot to foot, and finally steps around his table and crosses the room. 

Hermione’s entry looks better up close, with tiny candy details lending it charm, giving it life. And when it’s complete, perhaps a real contender to win. Draco glances back across the room at his own entry, a slight frown pulling at his lips.

She doesn’t look up when he approaches, but her mouth twists, something of a suppressed smile as if she senses his presence by way of the cloud of confidence he arms himself with.

“Are you using almond slivers as shingles, Granger? Wherever did you get them? I don’t recall those being provided by the Ministry.”

“Don’t start, Malfoy. I’ve worked very hard on this and I _know_ it’s impressive. Besides, it was brought to my attention that supplementing with my own supplies is perfectly within the guidelines for the competition.”

Her own candy floss clouds hover lazily over her gingerbread roof, occasionally puffing a small plume of icing sugar onto the scene below. 

“Your entry is acceptable,” he says.

“Better than yours, from what I can see.”

“You’re halfway across the room. You can’t see much, I’m sure.”

“You’re the one with the glasses these days. My vision is still perfect.”

Draco picks a jelly tot up off the table and rolls it between his fingers. “This color combination, though. Honestly, it’s appalling, Granger. So much red, agitating to the eye. Just looks like tired Gryffindor decor.” 

She looks up at him, piping bag still in hand, and her eyes narrow to slits, suspicious and disbelieving all at once. It makes him laugh, solidifies his choices. He needles a little harder, maintaining that attention, that deadly focus.

“You should really consider green,” he says, placing the jelly tot back on the tabletop.

“I much prefer the red. Equally festive, less annoying.”

He just grins and pulls his wand, charming all her red candies green. 

Her mouth drops open, anger furrowing her brow as a beat of silence creates a vacuum in which all Draco can do is laugh. 

“Much better,” he says, surveying the change. “Need to grab more icing for myself. Good luck, Granger.”

“Malfoy don’t you dare—come back here. You can’t just change _my_ work—” 

But he’s already gone, walking away. Not far enough that he can’t actually hear her, but far enough to pretend. He smirks at the sound of her huffing, a true vision of dignified leadership. 

She charms her clouds to follow him, conjuring more: a candy floss storm warring with the decor overhead. He dips into the storeroom to avoid the icing sugar deluge that nearly covers him.

—

Draco freezes when she follows him into what normally functions as a supply closet for various cafeteria and cafeteria-adjacent accouterments. Today, though, it has been packed to the brim with boxes of candy canes and jelly tots and chocolate discs. Piping bags, buckets of royal icing, and stacks of gingerbread panels just waiting to be configured into house-like shapes clutter the space, monopolizing the room.

Her robes brush against the back of his legs as she steps inside, breath still heavy, still spouting weak protests as she slams the door shut and steps away from him. 

He turns to face her with a fresh piping bag of icing in his hand: a deep emerald green. 

Her hair looks as if a sifter full of sugar has been shaken just above it, covered in a snow that will not melt.

“You have no right—you can’t just _change_ my entry because you prefer green—”

“My gods, Granger, does it ever get exhausting bossing me around?”

“You said you—”

“—yes, one time, under duress, I _might_ have mentioned I found myself mildly enjoying it.” He steps forward, captive to the proximity a tiny, cramped supply closet has afforded them. The lines on his face, more present than not as age has carved them into his skin, soften as he looks down at her, as eyes meet. “As you’ll recall from my numerous drunken apologies over the years, I’ve said and done a lot over the course of my life while under duress that I regret terribly. Truth be told, that comment is the least of them.”

What might have been flippant, playful, or even sharp, comes out level, serious, sincere. 

They’re standing too close together. The weak closet lighting is too dim. Boundaries too blurred.

Implications fragment, fractal meanings cracking through the air between them.

“Don’t rehash old apologies with me, Malfoy.” And what might have been bite, resolution, tumbles haphazardly. Hermione’s arms hang limp at her sides, wand barely held in a weak grip.

He takes another step closer, the toes of his shoes connecting with hers. He drops his icing bag on a shelf, pulls her wand from her fingers and places it there, too.

“Why not? Interesting things seem to happen when I do. Most recently, last year.”

“I remember.”

“You kissed me.”

Cramped, dim supply closets, with air so sweet it tastes like sugar, shrink even smaller when kissing becomes a topic of conversation. Hermione shifts, an attempt to regain some of her balance, suddenly thrown at an odd angle by a mention of the thing they’d _agreed not to talk about._ She is Minister for Magic. She is not so easily unmoored by the mentioning of things that should never have happened, not between two adults with pasts and presents as complicated as theirs. 

Her scapula connects with the door behind her. Then her spine flattens against the wood as he follows her movement, another step of his own, keeping the toes of his shoes lined up perfectly with hers.

She opens her mouth but he cuts her off.

“I don’t want to _not talk about it_ anymore.”

“We were both drunk. It was inappropriate.” Her whispers come out in a low, sharp staccato, something that sounds like it’s meant to carry authority despite the breathiness behind each syllable. 

“If you hadn’t kissed me that night, I would have kissed you.”

The back of her head makes contact with the door, too.

“I am your boss.”

“You deliver my performance review.”

“That makes me your boss.”

“I disagree.”

“Malfoy, you can’t just _disagree_ with the reporting structure at the Ministry.”

He looks like he might say something else, but his gaze drifts up to the sugar clinging to her curls. He leans in, above her head, and forms his lips into an ‘O’ shape. He blows, sending the sugar swirling against the door behind her, gathering at the crown of her head with nowhere else to go.

He reaches out, encouraging her to lean her head forward with a touch just behind her ear. He does not comment on the way she shivers at that moment and, instead, swipes his fingers across her hair, dusting the last of the fine powder away.

When her head makes contact with the door again, her eyes close. 

“You are so infuriating,” he says, watching as her eyes remain shut but a smile forms on her lips. “You’ve accepted my apologies. You offered me a job. You banter and challenge and keep a meeting for me on your schedule every single week. Worst of all, you’ve made me participate in the most abhorrent fun-having imaginable.” Her eyes open but he does not stop. “ _You_ kissed _me_ and you refuse to talk about it.”

“I’m your boss.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m divorced.”

“I’m a widower.”

Persistent little things, several candy floss clouds slip through the gap at the bottom of the door. Lazily, they rise to the ceiling, driven to pursuit by Hermione’s frustrated charmwork. They open up, a storm of icing sugar dusting them. Draco grabs his wand and charms them to expel a tiny sprinkling of sugary snowflakes atop their heads, instead. Less of a storm, more of a drizzle.

Icing sugar sticks to Draco’s lenses, obscuring his sight. He reaches for them, but she beats him to it, confident hands pulling his frames from his face: dropped on a shelf with a piping bag and their wands.

Draco smiles and it covers the difference left by dim closet lighting, bright in a learned way: the way a man smiles at the end of a war, at his wife on his wedding day, at his sleeping newborn, at his child he’s so grateful to see alive, at the impossible woman who helped pull him out of grief, out of loneliness, and gave him passion again. A slow smile, learned over years.

Hermione lifts her hand and brushes the powdery snow from his hair. 

“You were right,” she says.

“I usually am.” His head tilts. “About what, though, in this specific instance?”

“Your hair _is_ soft.”

“I did tell you.”

“It’s not that I—” she starts, but he cuts her off.

“I quit.”

Her eyes widen, hands flying up to rest on his chest in an inexplicable, discordant show of intimacy they have neither earned nor acknowledged. 

“You can’t _quit,”_ she says in a harsh whisper. Her brows pull together, a heavy line in her thinking. “If anything, I ought to fire you—”

His laugh halts her.

“You’ve seen my performance reviews, _delivered_ them, in fact. You have no grounds to fire me.” 

As if practiced time and time again, or perhaps imagined so vividly that muscle memory operates more on wishes than experience, Draco’s hand coasts across her ribs, around her waist.

He gives her a blink, a breath, and a single sentence to pull away.

“I am an independently wealthy man who took this job to fill my abundance of spare time; I quit.”

Her swallow travels beneath his palm because his other hand has found her neck, long fingers cradling beneath her ear, wrapping around towards the base of her skull.

“I expect a formal letter of resignation on my desk at your earliest convenience.”

His eyes roll as her fingers flex against his robes.

A moment hangs: between decisions. Hers. The decision has always been hers. 

Just like before, a year ago now, she kisses him. 

She surges forward as his lips pull to a smile against her mouth. He indulges in a single second of smugness before he pushes her back, _thudding_ against the door. 

Sugar flurries swirl: sweetener for skin and tongues and sighs. Hands wander, robes fall from shoulders, buttons push through button holes.

He wedges his thigh between her legs, shoving up her respectable pencil skirt as he pins her against the door. He breaks his lips from hers, descending down her jaw, her throat.

He speaks into her collarbones. “Your protection detail won’t interrupt, will they?”

Important logistical questions before too much clothing lands on the floor.

She rocks against his leg, head tilting back and mouth slipping open as sugar snow lands on her lips. “No. They—” Her words evaporate as he samples the sugar on her tongue. From between kisses, between tiny whimpered sounds from her, between quiet curses and groans from him, she finishes: “They know. They all know. _Everyone_ knows.”

“Scorpius knows. He’s been asking me for over a year.”

“Rose said something just last week.”

“Potter can barely stand to be in the same room as us.”

“I can’t have—we can’t at work—” she starts, even as her hands descend, fingers on his belt buckle. His groan—of pleasure or frustration, it’s unclear—quickly fills the tiny closet. 

“Shut up, Granger. It’s not my work anymore. I’ve just quit.”

His hands find her bra clasp at the same moment she pops open his trouser buttons.

“You can’t just tell the Minister for Magic to shut up.”

Their eyes meet in a pause between movements, between breaths; smiles stretch between them.

“You are so obnoxious.” There’s no bite, but there’s growl, rumbled words from somewhere deep in his chest. Hermione’s hips roll again. “What exactly _can_ I tell the Minister for Magic?” he asks.

She doesn’t respond, not as her bra slides down her arms, leaving her topless in a supply closet with Draco Malfoy’s thigh between her legs. The whining sound she does make shoots out of her at the same time he cants forward, reintroducing her spine to the wooden door he’s pinned her against. Several sugar snowflakes land on her shoulder.

“Am I permitted to tell the Minister for Magic what I plan to do to her?” His question is quiet against her neck. Nails scrape against the wooden door, hers, in a helpless motion, before she reaches for his trousers again. 

“Yes,” she breathes as her fingers skate across his abdomen, dipping dangerously. “So long as it does not include having sex with me in a supply closet, Malfoy. I’m _forty-six._ I don’t think I’ve bothered with trying to have sex standing up since my early thirties at the latest.”

“Always _so_ bossy,” he says, but his voice catches as her hand dips again, beneath elastic, gripping him. She leans forward and licks a broad stripe of sugar from where it's begun to stick to his chest. His curse is muffled by the sound his palm makes as his slaps against the door. 

With his other hand, Draco angles her chin up, away from its descent down his stomach. He sucks in a new breath with every slow pump her hand makes, a languorous torture.

“As a matter of principle,” he says. “I’m going to get you off at least once in this closet. Then you are going to use whatever Minister privileges you have to apparate from wherever you like in this building—my bed or yours, I don’t mind. Actually, mine is probably bigger. Nicer sheets, too. We’ll go to mine. You will inform your Auror detail that the Minister for Magic has been taken hostage by a former employee and that she won’t be leaving his bed for the next several days.”

As if in emphasis, his hand at her chin dips, down her chest, lower, over the bunched up fabric from her skirt that rests haphazardly in a circle around her hips. He finds her knickers, drags his finger along the elastic.

“Where’s my compliment?”

Her skin tastes like sugar as he sucks beneath her ear and does not respond to her question. She tightens her grip on him just so—a purposeful stroke that pulls his attention away from her neck and to the delectable things her hands can do—even as his own fingers push her knickers to the side. 

“You said,” she continues, breath stuttering as his fingers slide inside her. “That I’d know when you really compliment me”—a strangled whine as she grinds against his palm, head limp against the door—“something about my knickers. I can’t—” She pulls in a deep breath, speaks clearly, enunciates perfectly. “I want my compliment.”

He smirks, a flicker of an expression before his hips rock forward into her hand. Expletives splutter. 

“You are _so_ incredibly bossy,” he says, teeth connecting with the tendons running vertically along her neck.

Her spine arches away from the door, mouth dropped open as a single sugar snowflake lands on her tongue. He continues before she can form a response, jaw tense in the way her whole body is, rapidly losing control.

“That’s the compliment, _Minister._ You are so, _so_ very bossy. And I’m more than mildly enjoying it.”

When she comes, it’s with sugar in her hair and his tongue in her mouth. And several department’s worth of employees divvying up their portions of the betting pool on the other side of the storeroom door.

The reporter from the _Prophet_ graciously leaves that bit out.

**Author's Note:**

> so many thanks to smozark for her beta support! she's a total champion for putting up with me whining about things i didn't want to change but knew i needed to xD thank you! 
> 
> and an additional thank you to anyone reading! i certainly hope you enjoyed my little christmas-themed take on a post-cc dramione! if you'd like to come hang out or learn about what i'm working on in between projects, swing by my [tumblr](http://mightbewriting.tumblr.com/)! we have a good time over there!


End file.
